"Twilight Over" (first published Dec. 8, 2008)

Alright. So here's the deal.

Twilight is a decent book. It's not bad.

Stephanie Meyer does an excellent job of painting her protagonist - and perhaps teenage girls as a species - as being whiny, dependent, needy, fickle, and bi-polar. While this may be an accurate portrayal (hahahahaha), the book suffers under the reader's constant need to tell Bella to shut up and stop being annoying. I personally shouted, "Stop complaining! You had a good day! You made friends! Get over yourself!"

I bear no illusions; Twilight is juvenile fiction, aimed at teenage girls. It becomes painfully, agonizingly obvious about ten minutes in, that you are not a member of the target demographic. I tend to think if I had been, I'd feel guilty.

I got the distinct impression that Twilight was Meyer's way of living out some girlhood fantasy. It's easy to see why the series gained such notoriety so quickly, and equally easy to understand the ire it draws from folks like... well, like us.

All that said, Meyer's image of the vampire is a refreshing departure from the archetypal metamorphosing count, with his narrow eyebrows, fangs, and lethal allergy to sunlight. Perhaps it's been done before - I don't know, I'm not into vampires - but she does a pretty good job of presenting it. The segments wherein the reader finds out about the Cullen family, how they live and where they come from, are where the novel truly shines (for me anyway), and in their own right, may be reason enough for you to give this dark tome a read. Unfortunately, any person hoping to enjoy said segments will be forced to wade through passage after passage of unbelievable, cheesy, overly sentimental romantics that sound like they were conjured up by a Jonas Brothers superfan. I lost count, but it seemed to me that Bella (I loathe this name. Loathe it) and Edward had pledged their eternal love to each other after dating for, like, a week. I could be wrong though, I spaced out a lot.

As far as pacing and flow, the story moves along at a decent clip. It drags in the middle, again due to the, "Edward's face was perfect and beautiful and I blah blah blah", which is consistent throughout. The story is told first person, which does nothing to diminish the irritating scent of teen.

There are some decent action scenes (not sure what the proper term would be here), but again, as we're forced to endure the story through Bella's eyes, we get only flickering glimpses of what the Cullens and their ilk are capable of. The protagonist's recalling of said events usually consist of, "it happened so fast and suddenly they/he/it was/were there/gone/over/the milk was sour." On the one hand, it gives the story a realistic feel; if you've ever been in a car accident or been attacked by an animal (stay away from goats, friends. Trust me) then you know how fast that ruckus goes down. Meyer's presentation of fast action plays out in such a way, and has that car accident feel. On the other hand, it feels like a copout. I felt cheated. I wanted more vampires killing stuff and each other, and felt like the only reason there wasn't more of it was because Meyer didn't know how to write it.
Of course this isn't the case, as this isn't the focus of the story. Twilight's primary purpose is to tell a love story, and considering the target audience, it does a pretty good job.

Also, this, "superbaseball" thing? It's actually sort of cool. The description of the event is one of the better ones in the book, and it's not a huge part of the story. I also don't believe it was ever actually called, "superbaseball". Perhaps I spaced out while the name was used, but I'm almost certain that the term was coined by the fans.

All in all, Twilight has something to offer. Whether or not you like it is dependent on your ability to tolerate teenage girls (both the ones in the book, and the real ones who seem to think the volume is on par with Dune).
If you don't let the fangirls ruin it for you, you might enjoy Twilight. Though if you pass the book up altogether, you probably won't be much worse for the lack.

I don't plan on reading the rest of the series. I read plot summaries and didn't find much to get excited about. Parts of the latter three books sounded interesting, but not enough to endure more emotional jibberjabber poopycock. I have to go teach a Karate class.